How Flyway per-user licensing works
Published 31 May 2023
The Product Specific Terms document outlines the licensing requirements for Redgate products including Flyway:
Key definitions
"Redgate Pipeline" means any and all of the database environments that form part of an automated database change delivery process using Our software, other than Flyway Teams;
"Flyway Teams Pipeline" means any and all of the database environments that form part of an automated database change delivery process using Flyway Teams;
Flyway Enterprise
17.4 Each user that is contributing or inputting database changes to a Redgate Pipeline must have a license for Flyway Enterprise.
Flyway Teams
Each user that is contributing or inputting database changes to a Flyway Teams Pipeline must have a Flyway Teams Per User license.
What is a pipeline?
A pipeline contitutes the sequence of environments through which database changes flow, starting with development environments, and ending in Production.
{Development DB(s)} → {VCS} → {Build/CI DB} → {QA DB} → {Pre-prod DB} → {Production DB(s)}
How can I tell whether a Redgate Pipeline is in place?
If one of the following is true, a Redgate Pipeline is in use, which requires each user contributing database changes to own a Flyway Enterprise license.
- The Flyway CLI or API driving the automated pipeline is licensed with Flyway Enterprise. Type
flyway -vin a command prompt to determine which license is in use. - A capability reserved for Flyway Enterprise is contributing changes to the pipeline, for example the automatic generation of migration scripts, undo scripts, or static data. For a full list of capabilities reserved for Flyway Enterprise, visit the feature glossary.
It's recommended to enforce Flyway's tier as the first step in your pipeline to prevent undesirable behavior. Some commands may execute through Flyway Community while others may fail if licensed incorrectly. You can utilize bash and flyway version to enforce this:
flyway version -outputType=json | jq -e '.edition == "ENTERPRISE"'
If a Redgate Pipeline is in place, each user that is contributing or inputting database changes to a Redgate Pipeline, directly or indirectly, must have a license for Flyway Enterprise.
How can I tell whether a Flyway Teams Pipeline is in place?
If one of the following is true, a Flyway Teams Pipeline is in use, which requires each user contributing database changes to own a Flyway Teams license.
- The Flyway CLI or API driving the automated pipeline is licensed with Flyway Teams, for example to use the dryun or undo script capabilities. Type
flyway -vin a command prompt to determine which license is in use. - A capability reserved for Flyway Teams is being leveraged to save changes to the pipeline, for example generating and saving the object-level schema model to the project. For a full list of capabilities reserved for Flyway Teams, visit the feature glossary.
If pipeline qualifies as a Redgate Pipeline, it can't be regarded as a Flyway Teams pipeline.
If a Flyway Teams Pipeline is in place, each user that is contributing database changes to a Flyway Teams Pipeline must have a Flyway Teams Per User license.
Can I use different editions of Flyway on the same pipeline?
Redgate only supports Flyway projects and pipelines that are licensed to the same Flyway edition.
A pipeline is only supported if:
- all users (the versions of Flyway Desktop and the locally installed CLI used against a Flyway project) are licensed to the same edition
- all instances of Flyway called from a Flyway pipeline must be licensed to the same edition
Other licensing considerations to be aware of
- The primary licensee is the end user contributing database changes to the pipeline. Any number of databases can be in the CI/CD pipeline without incurring additional licensing costs.
- The exception to this is if Flyway binaries are "redistributed" out of the organization. Please contact sales@red-gate.com if your scenario requires external distribution.
- Database cloning is licensed per terabyte, not per-user. There is no restriction to how many end users can use the clones.
- Flyway Teams has a limit of 100 target schemas. Please contact sales@red-gate.com should this not be sufficient for your needs.
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